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Sebelius: Americans Don’t Like Obamacare Because their “Financial Literacy is Low”

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Well, she may claim to not know who Jonathan Gruber is, but she sure did get a copy of his talking points.

Discussing Obamacare with a USA Today reporter, former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius blamed many of the law’s problems on the fact that Americans lack her sophisticated understanding of insurance:

Still, Sebelius didn’t dispute the point that many Americans don’t fully understand how health insurance and the Affordable Care Act work, including the trade-offs involved in expanding coverage.

“A lot of Americans have no idea what insurance is about,” she said. “I think the financial literacy of a lot of people, particularly people who did not have insurance coverage or whose employers chose their coverage and kind of present it to them, is very low — and that has been a sort of stunning revelation. It’s not because people hid it from folks. It’s because this is a complicated product.”

Sebelius served as insurance commissioner for the state of Kansas before epically botching the roll-out of a federal entitlement program in historic and ostentatious fashion. So, she knows a thing or two, America.

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Sources Saying Sebelius Now Refusing To Testify Before Senate Panel

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Larry Downing

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Larry Downing

Outgoing Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius is now refusing to testify before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, a Senate aide told The Daily Caller Tuesday.

Sebelius had originally been set to testify before the subcommittee about the department’s 2015 $70 billion budget request on April 2.

According to another aide, however, several weeks after confirming the hearing date, she requested a date switch with the National Institutes of Health budget hearing on May 7. The committee accommodated her request.

Now, after announcing her resignation on April 11, she is refusing to testify according to the two aides, even though she is still the sitting secretary — remaining at the post until her successor, OMB Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell is confirmed.

“It appears that Sec. Sebelius has unilaterally decided that she is no longer accountable to Congress,” the first aide said.

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Sebelius is Out, but ObamaCare’s Problems are Here to Stay

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Kathleen Sebelius, the face of ObamaCare, is out. If only the Affordable Care Act were going with her.

Unhappily, as much as Republicans may cheer the departure of the Health and Human Services Secretary, who oversaw the bungled roll-out of President Obama’s signature health care legislation, the damaging law will continue to infect the economy like a great virus.

Sebelius may have drastically mismanaged the start-up of ObamaCare, but she cannot be blamed for the law’s fundamental flaws.

The law forces healthy young people to pay excessive rates for a level of insurance they do not need in order to fund the costs of coverage for older sicker people.

The fines that are meant to drive young people to this foolish economic choice are inadequate; many will simply choose to go without.

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Sebelius Botches Farewell Speech (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Though no stranger to the occasional glitch, outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius flubbed part of her farewell speech when she realized one of her pages was missing.

She gave her speech in the Rose Garden at the White House Friday alongside President Obama and his nominee to replace her, Sylvia Matthews Burwell. Sebelius announced her resignation on Thursday, just days after the ObamaCare enrollment period drew to a close.

Sebelius was praised by Obama for her five years of service, and was speaking about the families benefiting from the new health law. She turned one of the pages and lost her place. She spent a moment rummaging through her notes and told the audience, “Unfortunately, a page is missing.”

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SHE’S OUT! Kathleen Sebelius Resigns as Secretary of HHS After ObamaCare Fiasco

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Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

After holding tight to her position as Health and Human Services Secretary for five years, Kathleen Sebelius resigned earlier this evening.

Sebelius became a household name in the fall for her role supervising the troubled rollout of the Healthcare.gov website and the general failure of President Obama’s signature healthcare law thus far.

The White House announced that tomorrow Obama will nominate Syliva Mathews Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget to succeed Sebelius – a name that few know today, but will certainly come to recognize once she takes over.

According to reports, Sebelius was not forced out and chose to resign on her own recognizance. That said, her decision to leave coincides with a major push by the Obama administration to move past the early failures of the healthcare law, especially in light of the upcoming midterm elections wherein the law will feature prominently.

One of her last acts as HHS Secretary was to testify before the powerful Senate Finance Committee wherein she touted that 7.5 million people had enrolled in private insurance plans – half a million more than the original CBO projections.

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NBC, ABC News Press White House on Secret Sebelius Meetings (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

During Friday’s White House briefing, Jonathan Karl of ABC News and Peter Alexander of NBC News both pressed White House spokesman Jay Carney on a Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report that found President Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had met only once during the three and half years after the passage of ObamaCare.

After Alexander asked about the GAI report, Carney bizarrely suggested that Alexander should have called him to ask the question. Apparently, Carney would have preferred not to have to answer the question on camera — and for good reason; his answer only opened the door to more questions.

Alexander got to the heart of the matter by pointing out that President Obama’s calendar lists all kinds of meetings with other cabinet secretaries, including 277 with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And yet, although she is in charge of Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment, this calendar shows no meetings with Sebelius.

“That draws some questions about the president’s leadership skills as the chief executive,” Alexander said. “And I’m curious–” A visibly agitated Carney interrupted. “Peter, I wish you had called me beforehand,” Carney scolded. “Because I am in a very terrible charitable mood today, I won’t go too strong on this.”

Carney went on to claim that Sebelius met “often” with the president, but that those meetings were not recorded on the visitors logs or any public calendars. Carney didn’t know how many times the two had met, and did not bother to explain why these calendars record numerous other cabinet officials meeting dozens, and in some cases, hundreds of times with the president.

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The ‘Fatal Conceit’ of President Obama and Kathleen Sebelius

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Photo Credit: Washington ExaminerI have lined up my Christmas presents this year for President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

I will send them both a copy of the last book written by one of greatest economists of the last century, and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974, F.A. Hayek.

The book is called The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism.

Although the language and discussion of the book is not all that simple, the basic point is, I think, pretty straightforward. Hayek summed it all up in his acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize.

He noted the critical importance that we know what we don’t know. Thinking you know what you don’t and can’t know, the illusion that men can plan, organize, and control things far beyond their understanding is the “fatal conceit” of socialism.

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Health Care Law Allows Hiring Convicted Felons as Obamacare Navigators

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Photo Credit: Graeme Jennings/Washington ExaminerBy Susan Ferrechio

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a Senate panel Wednesday that there are no safeguards in place that would prevent convicted felons from becoming “navigators” for the new health care law implementation.

“That is possible,” Sebelius told Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who asked her about felons being hired for the job.

Health care navigators are certified counselors hired to help consumers and small businesses with the application process for healthcare.gov, the health insurance exchange website.

Navigators, according to healthcare.gov, are trained to help consumers complete eligibility and enrollment forms, which include sensitive personal information including Social Security and financial information.

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Photo Credit: Evan VucciSebelius: Sorry, but we won’t delay Obamacare

By Tom Howell Jr.

President Obama’s top health official said Wednesday that early Obamacare enrollment numbers will be “very low” but rejected any talk of delaying the reforms, even as Senate Democrats pressured the White House to correct the law’s failures.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made her second apology on Capitol Hill in the span of one week for the persistent glitches that have made it difficult for people from 36 states to enroll for coverage on HealthCare.gov.

“It’s unacceptable. I am focused on fixing it, and I’m accountable,” Mrs. Sebelius testified before the Senate Finance Committee.

But putting off the Affordable Care Act, she said, “wouldn’t delay people’s cancer or diabetes or Parkinson’s” disease.

“People’s lives depend on this,” she told lawmakers on the Democrat-led panel.

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Newt Gingrich: Sebelius Worse Liar Than Nixon

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreNewt Gingrich accused embattled Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Wednesday of being a worse liar than disgraced former President Richard Nixon.

The charge — which the former House Speaker delivered in a biting tweet — came Wednesday morning as Sebelius delivered testimony on the disastrous rollout of the new Obamacare health insurance website before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“Sebelius dishonesty in testimony this morning exceeds anything president Nixon was accused of. The Obama team can’t tell truth and survive,” Gingrich tweeted.

Sebelius’ testimony was her first appearance before Congress since the Oct. 1 debut of Healthcare.gov, the federal website that was set up to enable Americans to buy insurance.

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Obamacare On Trial: ‘You Deserve Better. I Apologize,’ Sebelius Says (+video)

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/APHealth and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized to the American people Wednesday for the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov – the web portal that is key to implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“You deserve better. I apologize,” Secretary Sebelius said in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “I am accountable to you for fixing these problems, and I’m committed to earning your confidence back by fixing the site.”

But even as she insisted that the site’s problems are fixable, the optics could not have been worse: The site was down, yet again, due to technical difficulties (though not HHS’s fault). Uninsured Americans have until Dec. 15 to sign up for coverage that goes into effect Jan. 1, the date the mandate to carry insurance starts.

The administration has promised HealthCare.gov will be functioning smoothly by Nov. 30, a month away, but has said it will reveal preliminary numbers of enrollees sooner – by mid-November. Even now, Sebelius admitted, the feature of the site that transmits the data of enrollees to insurers is still not working.

Read more from this story HERE.